Low Pay, poor training. T/L or supervisors act like they are almighty.T/L provides guidance to some team members selectively. Without consulting managers and without team member's permission, T/L assign away all of works from one particular team member to all other team members on the second day on the floor.T/L has a power to take away one's accountability and manipulate one's capability by giving away all of one's work to his favorite team member whom he sit with, trained, and chat with hours and hours.Despite of suspecting every tiny single work from one team member who speaks with heavy accent, T/L never did thorough review on works before the works was submitted to Q/C because he totally trust someone he trained hours and hours. And then the T/L would blame the Q/C did not do their job.T/L never comes to work in time due to his car broken down, his sickness, and etc. When the Checkpoint was not pushed through in time, the T/L blame it on that heavy accent speaking team member although that member had been waiting for the T/L all day to review the Checkpoint and everything before submitting as required by the T/L.T/L would blame every mistake he found on that heavy accent speaking team member without doing thorough research or forgetting that he actually gave all of one's work to other members.Sometimes, the T/L would give that heavy accent speaking team member some bread crumbs (work) that other team member had already worked on. When this accent speaking member pointed out the errors other members did, immediately, the T/L would tell other members that the heavy accent speaking member found their mistakes. It really caused other members hate this accent speaking member.The one who speaks with heavy accent was willing to work it out and eager to get improved. After first week on the floor, and after the T/L came back from vacation, the heavy accent speaking team member agreed that she would work on the list that the T/L provided. Saying that "manager will help you", the T/L sent email with a list of “performance review” based on his level of knowledge plus his gut and judgment to his manager and HR managers. In the meeting with HR manager, the T/L exaggeratedly grumble all the mistake he could find to cover his own faults. during the meeting although the heavy accent speaking team member always talk with big smile on the face and did not say anything bad about this T/L, the HR still believed that the T/L is right about that this worker argued a lot without considering that the T/L has friend in the company and people talks.It is not worth to work for a company that has no respect to others and create manipulation of other’s capability.

Terrible culture, especially on the internal services side. No growth for top performers, holding salaries and levels below competitors, squeezing many people's work out of one person, letting go of top performers for no logical reason, and letting terrible performers stay

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Value your internal staff more and look at their career growth, especially for top performers

very respected as an accounting firmfeedback, when available, is generally comprehensive.

Cons

Did not like the culture at all and overall was an exceptionally poor experience. Lack of diversity (at the branch I was at in any case) was really frustrating + noticed that there was little room for people to be "different" ie. everyone drank, went on nights out together often- if you preferred not to engage in such activities you would feel very left out. Work was very tedious (I went in with an open mind but accounting is indeed as boring as the stereotype goes!), was not given enough responsibility even after flagging up the fact that I was sitting around with no tasks to do numerous times. Resulted in me having to sit around doing nothing for hours on end, right in front of my manager itself who didn't seem to care!

Advice to ManagementAdvice

When one gives feedback or requests work, it appears to not be taken into account. Flagged up issues on several occasions, none were resolved.

Hotelling - temporary desk; tiny locker miles away from your desk; tiny shelf miles away from your locker and your desk; clients still send tons of paper and you may be on crutches though injury; some school leaver <<...>>> with no other qualifications dares to police your desk ... no matter you have the best degree and first time passes and tons of brilliant experience - they still send some idiot to tell you off for not being able to walk on crutches and carry <<whatever>> to your locker at the same time - <<advised to remove "bad language">>?!

I only chose to work at PwC because the name recognition will be worth it when I want a job elsewhere. You may be lucky enough to enjoying working with each team. There are big name clients in the Baltimore region as well.

Cons

There is zero work/life balance. I frequently worked on the audit team throughout the night into the early morning. Typical days lasted from 7am until 4am. I would regularly get 3 hours of sleep each day, then be expected to work on weekends too. This DOES NOT change, regardless of what they say or what you think, even at the higher levels.

We work on completely outdated computers with old software. I don't understand why they can't buy us newer laptops or just update to Windows 8.

Just because I didn't graduate from a prestigious university (UDel) doesn't mean that I should be overlooked.

My advice to recent college grads is to look elsewhere, especially outside of Baltimore where the accounting market is so stale. I've interviewed with several other firms in the DC region that are much less stressful and pay more.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Stop treating your interns like garbage and forcing them to work overtime without paying.

PWC tends to get high-profile contracts, which can be exciting for a technical developer.

Cons

I worked for a year as a full-time consultant for a website development contract with a federal agency. We were asked to build a fairly simple and small public-facing content website -- a project we could have hit out of the park in three months. Instead, we weighed it down with incredible amounts of useless bureaucratic time-wasting that added nothing at all to the quality of the product. Website development is not a field that benefits from an atmosphere of intense regulation and corporate conformity. We ended up spending a full year on a project that was not very difficult, employing a team of nearly 10 people when we needed maybe 3. As the tech lead, I had a full-time manager whose only job was to observe my work, though I would have been perfectly capable of delivering on the schedule without a full-time manager. Even more ridiculously, my manager had a full-time manager whose only job was observing him!!! Then, every couple of months or so, they would bring in a "quality team" from some other section of PWC whose only job was to observe all of us. Why didn't they just leave us alone and let us build a website? In the end, all this recursive bureaucracy achieved was to establish a mood of dull conformity and corporate dread, which is the PWC lifestyle in a nutshell.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Website development is not the business PWC should be in. Website developers tend to have some "joie de vivre", which is apparently illegal at PWC.

Exit opportunities, free CPA exam, free dinners. Not much in the grand scheme of things. For some reason, other employers value this place's employees, so you can capitalize on that good will. Leave as soon as possible.

Cons

Work life balance is horrible. You will never see friends or family. Busy season does not ever end - there is always more to do. It's bad all year.

Seniors wait until late in the day to give you work, ensuring you share in their misery into the wee hours.

The experience looks good on paper but being staffed on mega-engagements doing very specific tasks leaves you with just a vague understanding of how specific software /work papers work, without any big picture context. You won't learn much unless you commit years of your life to the job, and doing so is social and familial suicide. You will find that after leaving you will have learned almost nothing useful.

My seniors were socially incompetent, cliquey, terrible at teaching and generally unhelpful - with a couple exceptions. They did not welcome new staff and were condescending and rude.

The healthcare benefits are terrible, especially if you have dependents. My wife and son qualified for state subsidized care, because UHC's coverage was so awful.

The pay is low. You can easily make just as much in an entry level staff accountant or internal auditor role at a private company.

The flexibility promised by the recruiters and partners is a lie. Simply do not believe any of it. Their "flexibility" = being available via laptop 24/7 with no ability to get away from work.